PHOTOS from Travis family archive: LEFT) Betsey Travis Angus and Phyllis Diller. RIGHT) Eloise and Boyd Travis with Phyllis Diller.

Story provided by Rev. Tom Castlen, former Bluffton Presbyterian Church minister

Church celebrates 175 Years, provides anecdote from the 1940s

After World War II, there was a scramble to call pastors. Bluffton Presbyterian had not had a pastor during the war and they wanted to call Ernest Bigelow who was graduating from Yale Divinity School. 

Bigelow loved music. Phyllis Diller (née Driver; July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012), who played organ and directed the choir at Bluffton Presbyterian, wanted to impress him, but the church choir consisted of only four women and one man (who had to be awakened for the anthem), average age in the late 70s.  

So, Diller went down the street and borrowed 12 members from the Mennonite choir for the day when the pastoral candidate was giving his trial sermon for the Presbyterians. 

The music was extraordinary! And Rev. Bigelow took the position.  On his first Sunday, there was Phyllis playing the organ and directing the choir of four women and one man.  

Phyllis Diller was a Lima native and studied at Bluffton College.  She married Sherwood Diller and was living in Bluffton during the time she was on staff at Bluffton Presbyterian. 

Diller became good friends with Dr. Boyd Travis and his wife Eloise. Dr. Travis delivered her first child. After Phyllis Diller became a world-famous comedian, she returned to Bluffton for Dr. Travis to deliver her second and third children and she came back again for surgery in 1970.

Have news about your church? Email [email protected].